Love truth, love love (1/2)

There are a few things I love. Love is one of them and truth is another.

There’s something so beautiful, refreshing, and clean about ferreting out the truth and getting to the bottom of a situation. Whenever children tell a porkie, their demeanour changes. Their hands cover their mouths in embarrassment, and they try to keep their distance so they don’t get caught out. Futile of course but just the way things are.

After a big heart-to-heart getting it all out into the open, a little discipline (yes, of course - I know, I know, only the verbal kind is accepted now thanks Sue Bradford!) and the child runs off as free-spirited as a bird. So refreshing. So pure. So very right!
It’s even worse when adults do it - deceive, I mean. Their childish hand-over-the-mouth guilty looks changes into a more subtle, scratch of their ear, nose or head, but their demeanour is still the same - guilty. And the wish to be distant from the one they lied to or deceived. Sounds a bit like what happened to Adam and Eve, doesn’t it?

I’ve experienced a lot of BS artists in my business career, even watching people stand up in court and lie outright. It makes me sick really how adults (who really should know better) can spin a yarn and steal, cheat and generally be a sleaseball in front of a judge, even convincing themselves that a BS story is really the truth. That’s just dumb.

Most people don’t love truth, for lots of reasons. It’s hard, and the truth can be really threatening, but while loving the truth is not easy to get started with, it actually gets easier the more that we do it.

It takes a real “man” to be able to fess-up to his crimes. The prouder we are, the harder it is, but the more we choose to be humble, the easier it is to accept the truth. I have watched my body age. It has lost its ability to handle the snowboard spills (I’ve now retired from the sport). But on the other hand, I’ve noticed myself becoming much more able to accept the less desirable attributes of my personality and character. This is probably one of the few things that I really appreciate about the aging maturing process.

I fell into the Christian faith through the recognition that the bible not only contained truth (as did many other religions), but that it was the truth - a massive difference that has under-pinned my faith for almost 30 years. I’ve struggled with many other issues but this one has remained crystal clear from day one, thanks to that little seed of faith that God planted “back then”.

When I first started seeking the truth I could never work out why so many people didn’t want to know it. In my idealism I thought that surely judges and others in authority should want to deal with the truth. In fact I found the opposite to be true - the higher one seemed to go on the social ladder the more politics, games, manipulation, deception and deceit seemed to flourish. Either power corrupted, or those who loved the truth sought not the public path. Probably a mixture of both.

There was a pathetic dude who had some pretty meaningful authority back in Jesus’ day; a Roman who had climbed the social ladder very successfully in his day. Pilate could easily bump people off at a whim, but it wasn’t this that he was immortalised for. He’s known now for a simple but profound and very revealing question of the Son of God:

Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place.”
“You are a king, then!” said Pilate.
Jesus answered, “You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”
“What is truth?” Pilate asked. With this he went out again to the Jews and said, “I find no basis for a charge against him.
John 18:36-38

I can understand Pilate’s position - sarcasm, life experience, doubt, self-protection and a gazillion other things will have crowded his mind as he had the honour of addressing the human embodiment of truth and asking Jesus the question “What is truth?” Oh dear Lord, what an opportunity he missed!

In our day and age it is fashionable to make our own truth. Amongst other labels, it’s sometimes called situational ethics - changing our ethics based on the situation rather than measuring against an external absolute. The underlying lack of love for the truth is global danger because it undermines our capacity to see, recognise and know absolute truth setting us on the slippery slide into evil.

Regardless of how we feel or think about truth, it is a deception to reject absolute truth. Seeking after truth, even to the point of loving the truth, is the VICTUS IN AMBITUS way.